Archive: September 2006

Friends of ours just got engaged this week, and that was nice news to receive. JG was pretty instrumental in helping the groom-to-be with the diamond selection, and I think we’ll have a wedding to attend next spring or summer. I picked up an engagement card along with my usual gift of thank you cards, and I’m happy for them.

Can’t you tell?

No, I really am happy for them, but I feel almost envious of all of the excitement and what they have to look ahead of them. It’s not that I don’t love being married, but it was so fun to be newly-engaged. I really enjoyed going to the parties, seeing older women at the supermarket smiling when they saw my ring, browsing wedding magazines, and creating my amazing Wedding Workbook – a collection of interconnected spreadsheets that tracked addresses, gifts, thank yous, RSVPs, expenses, and schedules. But I digress.

Now that I think about it, as momentous as it was, getting engaged was the first of many life changes that occurred over that year. Let’s see… I also graduated from college, found an apartment, landed a job (whew!), got married, bought a house, and moved in. I always had something to anticipate, something to push me forward. When I finished school, I was planning the wedding; when the wedding was over, we started house-hunting. Now that we’re sort of finished, I don’t know how to handle it. When people ask me what’s new, I’m at a loss for words. I’m at the same job, the house is still standing, and I don’t foresee any drastic changes in the near future. I feel motionless when I’m used to accelerating. Is this what they call a rut?

Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe I’m easing into a time of life where things are stable so that I can do… well, I don’t know what. That’s another part of this restless discontent. What am I doing with myself? I feel oddly guilty that I’m not striving for something, like I got married and checked my ambition at the door.

I’m sure I’ll look back on this period, thinking wistfully about how much leisure time I had, and scoff that I was too young to appreciate it. The trick is to savor the stillness and lack of urgency now, I suppose. And perhaps this is a time to count my many blessings, count them one by one.

Yesterday, I embarked on a household experiment for the greater good, by which I mean the greater good of my jewelry. See, our bedroom is a humid swamp during the summer months despite the thrumming of the dehumidifier, and since this was our first summer in the house, I didn’t anticipate the toll that would take on my not very large selection of sterling silver jewelry. Let’s just say that it wasn’t pretty.

Initially, I tried what JG’s mom called a foolproof method. She told me to “line the sink with aluminum foil, put in some baking soda, and then pour hot water in.” Uh, that’s it? What quantities of all of these things? How hot is the water? Does it matter that I’m trying to de-tarnish jewelry and not silverware? I surmised from the lack of details that quantities didn’t matter too much, so I started in my own fashion. I lined a cake pan (I was wary of my jewelry in the sink) with foil, shook in some baking soda, and then added hot tap water. I followed the directions, right? Wrong. My jewelry stayed as stubbornly tarnished as before, and I had a feeling that the solution was loosing its efficacy as the water quickly cooled off. Forget this – to the source of all knowledge, the internet!

A quick look on Google and eHow turned up a whole variety of solutions. They all had the water/baking soda/aluminum combination, but all other details were all over the map, like temperature of water (hot from the tap vs. boiling), quantity of baking soda (2 tablespoons on up to “one to two cups”!), time (as little as 5 minutes or as much as a half hour), and after-cleaning treatment. Some tipsters said to wrap the silver in plastic wrap, others recommended mylar bags, and still others preached of moisture-grabbing strips. Again, I mentally protested, “What if it’s jewelry and not forks?!” No one heard my cry.

Finally, after hearing me hem and haw about the variance in these methods – seriously though, why hasn’t anyone debunked the numerous and obviously wrong methods here? – JG put a pot of water on to boil and dumped in a cup of baking soda. Well, that shut me up. I was committed. We were going for the gusto.

The white mixture started to pop and fizz all over the place, and we dumped it into my foil-lined pan. I dropped in my jewelry, trying to maximize my available space, and watched with bated breath. Sure enough, the some of the tarnish started to fall away, and I took the “watched pot” reasoning and stepped away from the somewhat smelly pan.

Fifteen minutes later, I fished out my jewelry from the baking soda cakiness, and well, it kind of worked. Some pieces were totally clean, but others were kind of patchy. The solution wasn’t very comprehensive, to say the least, but I have no idea why. Too much baking soda? Not enough time? Bah. I wiped everything off and put each piece in a plastic snack bag, in spite of the few dire warnings against doing so, and made a mental note to consult my local jeweler. Which could have saved me some time and a whole lot of baking soda.

So much for being all Mr. Wizard.

6:20 – I meet a co-worker in the hotel lobby to grab a cup of tea and a taxi to the airport.

7:00 – We arrive at the airport and get in line to check in, fighting a bit of disorientation because the line is so long that we mistake it for the security line. We confirm with others that we’re in the right place, and check that our separate flights are on time, which they are.

7:30 – We emerge out of the security lines grappling with shoes, computer, jacket, and carry-on with time to chat before our boarding times. I check to make sure I’ve retained my boarding pass, after last time’s misplacement fiasco in the restroom (it was turned in to my gate, thankfully), and I stow it safely in my carry-on.

8:15 – My co-worker and I part ways to head to our respective gates. My flight is now listed with an hour delay, to depart at 9:45am, so I decide to go grab breakfast in the interim. An hour delay doesn’t bother me too much because I’m hopeful that the ride home will be lighter as far as traffic goes. I end up with a disappointingly tasteless orange poppy seed muffin cap, and a guilty-pleasure Entertainment Weekly (Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn were on the cover!). I leave JG a voicemail to let him know about my later arrival back home and then get to work on my muffin and magazine, staring out at the gray landscape of airport, planes, and tarmac.

8:35 – Someone triggers an alarm on an emergency door at the adjacent gate, resulting in a high-pitched, shrill noise in a continuous, piercing tone. Children shriek, older men plug their ears, and an airline representative announces on the loudspeaker that the alarm can only be turned off by the San Francisco police, and they’re on their way. She adds, “Please keep small children away fro the emergency door because … well, please just do that.”

8:50 – The police arrive to shut off the alarm. Harried travelers applaud.

9:15 – I look up from a story on Idlewild and notice on the screen in my gate that the departure time for my flight has magically and silently changed to 10:45. A woman nearby inquires at the desk and brings back news that Tropical Storm Ernesto is imminently pounding the east coast, including Philadelphia, and there’s something going on with air traffic control. We hear an announcement that the air traffic control people have restricted the number of flights that are allowed to land per hour. If the storm lets up, the quantity of flights may increase, but each airport with flights to Philadelphia will now be notified as events warrant. In short, I will be waiting here indefinitely while air traffic control decides whether we can land, with a possibility that the flight could be cancelled.

9:30 – I call my office to form the beginnings of a contingency plan and get assurance that charging a hotel room to my company card in this situation is okay, but I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. JG calls me and commiserates on my delays, assuring me that he wants me to get home soon, but not at my cost of my sanity. I appreciate.

10:05 – The flight departure time changes to 11:45am, arriving after 8pm. An airline person finally announces a boarding call of 11:15am for this departure time. More applause from Gate 68.

10:07 – A more to-the-point representative announces that because of other weather issues around the country, “anyone traveling to Philadelphia will need to remain on this flight. Do not ask us to reroute you, because we cannot. I repeat, you are stuck on this flight.” Recent applause dies out in favor of indignant murmurs and cynical chuckles.

11:15 – We board the plane as planned, and I find that my whole section of the plane has been taken over by a gaelic football team from San Francisco, and sentences like, “Dude, this sucks, dude” dominate their conversation. I hunker down for the flight and start to doze off before the safety video.